Our Love by Sharon Van Etten Lyrics Meaning – The Poetic Dissection of A Resilient Bond
Lyrics
I see your backhand again
I’m a sinner, I have sinned
We’re a half mast flag in wind
It’s our love
It’s our love
It’s our love
It’s our love
It’s our love
It’s our love
It’s our love
It’s our love
It’s our love
At the bottom of a well
I’m reliving my own hell
Someone throws the ladder down
Still don’t know what I have found
In our love
In our love
In our love
In our love
In our love
In our love
In our love
In our love
In our love
It’s all love
It’s all love
It’s all love
It’s all love
It’s all love
It’s all love
It’s all love
It’s all love
Somber, intimate, and piercingly honest, Sharon Van Etten’s ‘Our Love’ is a raw photographic negative of a relationship. With her haunting voice and cryptic lyrics, Van Etten dives deep into the complexities of love, exposing its underbelly through a lens of poetic skepticism. Her ability to articulate the nuances of human connection has always been a keystone of her craft, and ‘Our Love’ stands as a testament to that.
The listener is drawn into an almost voyeuristic engagement with the lyrics, left searching for clues within her rich tapestry of words. By the track’s end, it’s clear that Van Etten isn’t just singing about love in a traditional sense; she is exploring its multifaceted existence, its trials, and its resilience.
Peering Through Van Etten’s Heart: The Complex Tapestry of ‘Our Love’
Sharon Van Etten’s ‘Our Love’ isn’t your run-of-the-mill love ballad. It is an exploration – a quiet journey into the shaded regions of love where light struggles to shine through. From the opener ‘You say I am genuine, I see your backhand again,’ we’re grasped by the unsettling foreshadowing of turmoil. Yet, this is not a song of victimization or a dramatized tragedy; it is a realistic portrayal of love warts and all.
Radiating vulnerability, Van Etten deftly outlines the dichotomy within the song. The backhanded compliment that nuances the sincerity of her spirit is a stark metaphor that depicts a shared experience that’s both uplifting and belittling. The ‘half mast flag’ represents a love that is neither fully celebrated nor completely disregarded but caught in the prevailing winds of human flaw and fragility.
The Anchor Within The Storm: Decoding The Chorus
A chorus repeating ‘It’s our love’ like a solemn mantra serves as the gravitational center of the song. In these words, Van Etten isn’t just conceding to a sentiment shared or a passion experienced; she’s acknowledging an entity that almost stands apart from the individuals who feel it. This recurring refrain binds the pieces of the track together, much like how the shared feeling of love maintains the bond between two conflicted souls.
The simplicity in this lyrical repetition is not to be misunderstood for lack of depth; it is punctuated with a gravity that sinks in with each echo. The love spoken of seems to be its own character – an omnipresent force within the relationship, both the glue and the wedge, simultaneously healing and hurting.
The Well of Despair: Love’s Own Hell
Van Etten plunges her listeners into ‘the bottom of a well,’ a stark image of utter seclusion and despair. Love’s hell is a paradox, personalized and yet universal. Who throws the ladder down? Is it her lover, offering rescue, or a version of herself, reaching for salvation? The ambiguity is intentional, beautifully illustrating that the help we seek can come from within or from those who tether us to these deep emotional wells.
The antithesis within the lyrics highlights that discovery within love might require a dive into darkness. Finding oneself at such depths is a chilling revelation of personal vulnerability in front of another, yet this act of falling is a path towards illumination of the soul.
The Unveiling of a Hidden Meaning: Love Beyond the Emotion
Beneath the surface of what many might hear as a reflection on personal love, Van Etten challenges the listener to consider ‘our love’ as something broader – a symbol for collective human experience, beyond just a relationship. The song maps out the territory of love not just as an emotion, but as a shared human condition – fraught with the risk of pain, the promise of support, and the potential for growth.
The phrase ‘It’s all love’ acts as a cryptic reveal; the song may just be about understanding and accepting the struggles within any form of love – platonic, romantic, internal. This deeper dive into interactive human dynamics proclaims that love, in its essence, is a unifier, an equalizer, and a rite of passage through life’s most profound experiences.
Memorable Lines That Echo in the Void: ‘We’re a half mast flag in wind’
Among the poignant imagery and carefully chosen metaphors, it’s the line ‘We’re a half mast flag in wind’ that lingers in the listener’s thoughts. This line arrests with its stark depiction of a love that’s battered and worn but endures as a testimony to something once, or perhaps still, worth saluting. The vulnerability in such an admission creates a captivating paradox illustrating love’s permanence in transience.
The memorable nature of this line harkens back to a universal truth: that our lives are replete with love stories that are unfinished, undefined, and unfurled in unexpected ways. It’s a nod to the sway of a half-committed love yet one that persists despite every blow – subtle, complex, and undeniably human.
